Closer To You
by levamentum
Summary: "These last few months, I didn't know what to do; I don't know what I would have done. But now… Now, why is it that I know what I want to do? Why is it that now I know that there's going to be a future? Why is it that it's always seemed to be that way? …Around you." [Ozbert. Post-Canon.]


**Prologue: ****Anfractuous**

* * *

The grandfather clock struck the afternoon into the awarenes of all, stirring some of the wounded indiscriminately at those factors. The echoing ring was about as loud as it was cruel - so truthful to a ruthlessly pure degree that it even unrelentingly lulled some out of their peaceful sanctity of mind, the place balanced between pain and unconsciousness and of reality and dream.

The initial days felt entirely like that, nothing but a disoriented haze that obscured time into feeling so ill and foreign, as though the days were misaligned and one day stretched like

_Pain and timelessness._

After the last echo of the clock died out, one could make out the sound of breathing.

The breathing of the living.

The soft inhale and exhale of slumber filled the room, yet it felt so deathly quiet - quite easily forming the largest contradiction possible in the circumstances. Despite the vitality of those alive to hear (or more particularly, not to hear) the quiet, the mansion felt so bereft of life that one could feel the physical absences in the very absence of sound. The silence of the peaceful noon should have been a reminder that they survived to see the sun - a rekindling reassurance to the end of their woes - but it only seemed to reemphasize the fact that those who didn't make it would never be able to enjoy that afternoon.

A lost afternoon: only few would yield the privilege to experience it ever again.

The breathing rose in volume suddenly - fell out of rhythm in a sporadic way and sped up in tempo, becoming more labored. This, coupled with the shuffling of bed sheets, alerted the presence of an animated person in the darkness.

"G-Gil..."

A raspy murmur of the sleepless blond followed a small yet sharp intake of air, sounding more like a gasp than a soft breath. A hardly audible creak of the bed springs accompanied the turn of the figure on the mattress, leaving the lithe body facing the opposite side of the room and gazing into vacant darkness with wide eyes. The newly awakened teen was obviously unhinged as he cross-examined the wall frantically until he found what he was looking for - found the said older male's form melded in the nearby cot . At the sight, the blond was finally able to exhale peacefully. With a breathy sigh, Oz observed the older breathe for a short period of time and simply watched over his rest drowsily, gaining ease and peacefulness at the steady rise and fall of the man's entrenched body until he felt satisfied enough to hum in relief. After being certain of the older's presence and liveliness, the boy simply rolled back onto his back and his body fell into that rising and falling pattern once more.

This instance was one of numerous for the teen in the past day - waking up every few hours distraught and searching for one of his companions, calling their name frantically. Usually Alice and Gil. Ada. Break. Sharon. Sometimes even Uncle Oscar despite his consciousness being verily aware of the truth that he would never answer. All the times he would call usually were left unanswered since most of them were in the same battered state as he was. However, Oz wouldn't be able to sleep until he was sure they were well so his wounds didn't stop him from checking with his own eyes.

The boy would make certain that they were breathing, sometimes even rest his fingers to their wrist to feel for a tiny pulse in the hours when he was most fearful. He would then scramble back to bed and be overtaken by the rest that his healing body so desperately required.

And then he would go back into that slate of sleep - the land where he would oscillate between wakeful and deathly tired and where time was irrelevant; he would lose days like hours. Their wounds were taxing on their health after all.

This could be said for many, but no one to quite the same severity of Xerxes Break, who still laid limp and in need of bed rest after everything that had passed. The male was probably in the worst shape of his life. One day and two nights had passed since they had all escaped from the captivity of the Baskervilles - mere hours prior to when they quite nearly had their entire existences effaced. Their untoward circumstances produced similar results in everyone else, which left everyone in comparable shape; however, no one was at quite the same degree as the albino. Not only did his body incur physical damage but it also retained something deeper and there was simply something startlingly different about him. The man's physique was quite easily the most horrific aspect: disturbing. Even though his physical wounds were healing and even a month later, he just wasn't the same man even when he joked about it; with his frail constitution, sickeningly thin and obviously malnourished, there was simply something different about his energy. His posture was neither the same strong prideful stance nor did it carry the same jeering energy; none of his enthralling derision or grand hauteur. He was the same man in words and facial expression alone but a stranger in the aura of his drained ascendancy.

At first, everyone thought he would survive; everyone firmly believed that the man would recover. The placidity and sturdiness in the male's weak joints gifted everyone with hope that the red-eyed man would awaken and live through to tell the tale. Aching days of pressing forward; he fought the visible wounds and decimated the mental ones. He resolved a little bit longer for those dependent on him and for those he would inevitably crush.

And he did make it; he was lively, just as ever before - lively and jeering and teasing and evermore the snarky. He would occasionally get tired during the day, but no one thought much of it and simply attributed it to injury and for a while, this was enough to stabilize everyone.

It was a large morale boost, one can say, or perhaps the hasty tape that held the damage together - the damage that everyone tried to pretend not to see or more particularly, didn't want to see. He was the embodiment of their optimism, the very trellis that everyone had intertwined their hearts with as a symbol of hope that lived on - the one feat of light that shouldn't be possible. It kept them secure.

Those next weeks were peacefully encouraging and they even saw the prospect of felicity, maybe even a favorable befalling. Perhaps it was only appropriate that there would be some sunshine after the storm - their light at the end of the tunnel and their final gradualization to stability and continuity. This allowed especially Sharon to live with some needed relative relief following the calamity for some time.

* * *

_Nothing can last forever._

* * *

However, all it took were a few fortnights to correct them and they were reminded just how wrong they were to believe in something so entirely inevitable. Two months later, Xerxes Break drifted in his sleep and left behind a young woman who had lost her mother, grandmother, and last familial reminisce of her childhood with everything that had gone by.

That was the day in which they felt so cold that all the survivors could do was sit silently in tune with the grandfather clock's judgment. It was a reminder of mortality - a reminder of the mortality of everyone who passed, of those buried beneath. With that final reminder crumbled the final breath of their fool's paradise - the promise that things could remain the same after their losses and the longing for things to return to normalcy.

The cascade of normalcy came in the comforts and concurrences of the former plush rabbit and his valet.

The elixir of restoration and cure. Vivacity. Warmth.

The next seven months were a harsh, monotonous blur but within each one held promise.


End file.
